


Deep Water

by Theri



Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 09:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17743292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theri/pseuds/Theri
Summary: Sometimes you didn’t even feel the riptide pulling you out until you looked back at the shore some time later and realized it was getting further and further away. Therion was never too good at swimming.





	Deep Water

“I have faith in you.”

Five words he thought he’d never hear again. By the Flame, this girl was stupid. Therion could see it in her eyes--in the way the sapphirine depths shone so earnestly. What did she know? Cordelia Ravus was just a spoiled girl born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She did not know the ugly sting of betrayal, nor despair. What right did she have to proclaim them as friends?

And what right did Therion have to like it?

He  _ liked _ her name on his tongue. He  _ liked  _ the way in which she carried herself. He  _ liked  _ the way she looked at him with concern in her eyes. But what he liked didn’t matter; he wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. Any thief worth his salt wouldn’t stumble into the same trap twice. He’d learned his lesson with Darius: Trust got you nowhere. Therion had enough talent and skill to hold his own.

Besides, even if he  _ did  _ pursue her--which he certainly wasn’t interested in!--he wasn’t sure he could bear the life of a stuffy noble. After all, he’d always had a bit of a wool allergy, not to mention he preferred sleeping on the ground, and also being with Cordelia would bring judgment upon her since he was just some no-name thief and--

No. He would not go down that line of thought. Let sleeping dogs lie. In fact, he would tell her to keep the bangle on. Because if she took it off, he wasn’t sure he’d stick to his guns. No, Therion was bound to her through inconvenience, not because he actually wanted to help her. Of course he didn’t want to help Cordelia and her doe eyes and….  _ Please keep the bangle on. _ Because he wasn’t sure he’d leave if she did.

How had things ended up like this? He didn’t notice that damned bangle around his wrist anymore; it was just another part of him. If someone had told him ten years ago that he’d be at the beck and call of a noble girl, he would’ve laughed in their face. But yet, now that he was actually doing exactly that, the situation bothered him a lot less than he expected it to. Was he actually  _ looking forward _ to seeing her again in Boulderfall? Therion was smart; he noticed that his feet always moved a little bit faster whenever he was headed back to the cliffside town. He noticed how Primrose and Tressa giggled whenever he spoke to her. He would’ve put it off as the two being gossips, but…. 

Now, Therion was no stranger to the company of a woman. He was 22, and a man in every sense of the word. Usually he met them at alehouses. He only brought them back with him if they had information he wanted, or if it was a particularly cold night and he needed the warmth of another body. As a result, he’d been with all sorts of women--broads who cursed like sailors, young women hardly more than girls, plain-looking housewives, dancers, and pretty much anyone else you could think of. It was just a part of the job to him; nothing more, nothing less.

It was only Cordelia that he thought of afterwards. The moment women left his sight, they were tucked away into some forgotten corner of Therion’s mind. After all, they were just strangers really. But Cordelia came to mind annoyingly frequently. It manifested in even the simplest of things, such as when he saw a young girl in town laugh and he’d think to himself,  _ Cordelia’s laugh sounds like that. _ Or when he saw merchants peddling their wares and her face would pop into his head.  _ I wonder if Cordelia would like that. _ By the Flame, it drove him mad.

She never cared much of what anyone thought. Despite being squarely in the light, she surrounded herself with people cloaked in grey--if not black. Heathcote, for one. That man’s body count rivaled Therion’s own, and the blood that stained his blade came from all corners of Orsterra. That’s the thing about thieves that people like Cordelia tend to forget: they also kill. Therion was no assassin, and he never wanted to be. However, he was no stranger to bloodshed, and to killing. He’d been taking lives since he was just a child who barely knew how to work a blade. If she saw the crimson that stained his hands, would she run far away? He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to or not.

He waited for her to prove him right. Someday she’d show her true colors and abandon him. But even when he’d failed, she merely nodded her head and looked at him with those understanding eyes. Therion was a master of deceit, but even he could detect no malice in the depths of her gaze. Only sympathy, and other emotions that he didn’t understand.

Now Therion did understand plenty of other emotions. Lust, intrigue, desire. He didn’t see any of those in her eyes, though. The thief had learned of human nature through observing the alehouse. Of course it was no surprise that Cordelia Ravus, who had never been to such a place, didn’t reflect the behaviors he’d seen all his life. If only there were a place for him to go to understand her.

It was like trying to read a children’s book when you were illiterate. Yes, the words were simplistic and easy to see, but that made no difference if you couldn’t understand them. Cordelia’s emotions were written plainly across her face at all times, but that didn’t do Therion any good, because he didn’t understand those kinds of feelings.

Perhaps Heathcote was the same way. Perhaps he’d been swept up in all the commotion, and before he’d even known it, he was a butler. Sometimes you didn’t even feel the riptide pulling you out until you looked back at the shore some time later and realized it was getting further and further away. And by now, Therion was in  _ very _ deep water.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, another drabble. I've been awfully languid in my writing lately. I think it's the weather. So hard to get motivated with everything being so grey and slushy. Wrote this at 9 am in a McDonald's downtown while waiting for the bus after slipping on a metal grate hidden in the snow and spraining my ankle.


End file.
